


Earthbound

by Filigree



Series: Earthbound [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AU pre-IM3, Angst, Bittersweet, FrostIron - Freeform, M/M, Mention of suicide attempts, Mortal!Loki, Not Slash, Unreliable Narrator, eh?, hints of Marvel’s Earth X Celestials, implied rape, pre-slash if they're lucky, psychological abuse, so Odin thinks he can pass sentence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 20:42:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filigree/pseuds/Filigree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki finds a way to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earthbound

   

            “So. We’re doing this. What are we doing?” In the restrained, wood-paneled elegance of the bank’s private client room, Stark bounced on his toes like a child presented with a new toy. “C’mon, Loki, open it already. I brought you all the way to Zurich for it. And why did you need a lockbox in a Swiss bank, anyway? You could have just hidden the whatever-it-is in, say, some dimensional fold or hidey hole. Like most smart evil overlords would?”

            Of course Stark knew what was in the box. Questions and quips were part of his campaign to always know more. Loki gave him credit for deducing there _was_ more.

            He felt wary affection for Stark’s banter. Tolerance gained from two years’ exposure, certainly. Loki himself was no longer a god. Other mere mortals somehow built up immunities to Stark. It had simply been a matter of following and refining their methods.

            The man’s innate charm made it easier. Oh, Loki had noticed _that_ three years ago in Stuttgart, even under mind-control. The Titan had noticed it, too.

             “I had Swiss bank accounts for money, you maniac. I wasn’t a stupid evil overlord, just a deliberately incompetent one,” Loki told the smaller man, sliding the gray metal box once again away from Stark’s reaching fingertips. “I gave up my ‘ill-gotten’ gains in restitution. Part of SHIELD’s conditions for my tenure on Mid – on Earth. This box was considered uninteresting, so it remained in my name. There is no magic upon it or its contents.”

             From across the table, Stark gave him an outrageously complicit look and rocked back on his expensive custom-made shoes. “Whatever they need to think, eh, Trickster?”

            “No magic,” Loki repeated.

            Stark’s emotive features settled into gentle inquisition, his brown eyes far too sharp. “A box in a Swiss bank that not even The Hague can get to? What’s in it besides scrap metal? Cyanide pills?” He at least had the grace not to look ashamed after asking.

            Other Avengers and SHIELD agents still avoided mentioning Loki’s first few months of exile, and the numerous ways he’d tried to end his now-mortal and un-magical existence.

            “I’m done with active suicide attempts,” said Loki in absolute truth. “The box contains only samples of an iron alloy.” He tapped a code into the numeric lock, felt the tumblers click through their opening sequence. When he pushed back the lid, he turned the box toward Stark. “Go on. I know you want to.”

            The engineer twitched aside a brown anti-oxidant cloth wrapping.

            Seven twisted gray chunks gleamed dully inside, their shapes rounded as if by great heat, elongated as if from stretching. The longest was fifteen inches by three, curved and tapering at both ends like a misshapen boomerang. The others were slightly flatter, shorter. Loki was relieved to see no rust.

            “Ah,” said Stark, reaching – but not touching. Yet. He’d seen pictures, of course.

            SHIELD had made Loki open the box before, when he signed over his fortune. Their technicians had waved machines at the samples, noting harmless background radiation. Tests revealed an iron-nickel compound, with notable amounts of gold, platinum, and other heavy iron-loving elements. Bless his odd sense of justice, Fury had even paid the bank’s storage fees, and refrained from burying the fragments in SHIELD’s most unreachable archives.

            “I’ve read the reports,” said Stark, visibly controlling his grabby tendencies. “You told Fury these were meteorites, and that you’d planned to use them in sorcery. But the metal is wrong. That alloy’s a gravity differentiation structure, isn’t it? And this curve, here? Tell me that’s not shaped by magnetic field lines –”

            Loki could not help smiling as he watched Stark peer at the metal. “Very well, I won’t.”

            “Hmm. What are they, really?”

            “Coremetal.” Loki watched Stark’s pupils widen. “Earth’s core. When I still had magic, I stole some metal away from this planet’s center. I’d planned to study it, maybe use it as a weapon against your Avengers and Asgard. In the smallest part of my mind not bound by the Titan, I wondered if it could harm him. But I could not take it off-planet. No gate would hold shape around it, no teleportation spell convey it. Nor could I leap to other worlds while holding the least particle of it. So I stripped off its radiation to keep mortals or the Titan from sensing it. Once I had done that, no spell of mine would work on the metal again. I hid it away. I have need of it now.”

            “Anti-magic iron? No shit,” said Stark. “We could use that.”

            “So you shall. The largest piece is yours to do with as you wish. I require the other six, and your craftsmanship to shape them.”

            “Will the end product harm me or my planet?”

            “No,” said Loki.

            “Any other planet?”

            “No.”

            “Will it help the Avengers in battle?”

            Loki considered that. “No. But it will not work against them, either.”

            “Will it harm you?”

            “No.” Within certain values of ‘harm’, Loki silently added.

            “Then what the hell do you want?”

            “Six chains forged a certain way and welded in place when they are finished. For my neck, wrists, ankles, and waist.”

            Stark wavered between astonishment and a smirk. “Kinky.”

            “Not exactly. Consider them a symbol and a warning. I believe once they are locked in place, no other sorcerer or alien will be able to take me outside this planet’s magnetosphere. And once that is known, the frequent kidnapping attempts may cease.”

            Stark’s expression softened again. “Yeah, I didn’t like getting drafted to make weapons for the villain-of-the-month club, either. You really think this will stop Amora from caterwauling around the Tower after your skinny ass?”

            “Likely.” Though that was only a side effect of Loki’s plan, begun a year ago in spite, shame, and vindictive rage. Now that he’d finally committed to it, he felt relief. A lightness of spirit he’d not known for centuries…since youth and innocence in Asgard.

            If he was sentenced to mortality on Earth, then let it _stick_.

*

            On the private jet back to New York, alone but for the two pilots up front, Loki and Stark sketched out the design of the chains and their twisted, flattened links. Each link was a ribbon half-turned, such that one side ran smoothly and endlessly into the other. Stark called them ‘Möbius bands’.

            “Will you help me make them?” Stark asked, his fingertips tracing the patterns drawn on the tablet computer they’d passed across the empty seat between them.

            By that, Loki knew the engineer would do it, and not quibble, and not tell SHIELD right away like any sane person would. Exhibit A: one Anthony Edward Stark, easily led by his thwarted infatuation and compulsive creativity. Humoring the captive madman, and making him _jewelry_ from the coremetal fragments in a locked plastic case at their feet.

            The dishonesty of it left bitterness in Loki’s throat. “I can advise. I doubt you will require help. The metal is yours to work, now. I cannot craft, finish, or fasten my own chains. When you lock and weld them shut, I should not even be conscious.”

            “Right. Because you freak out when anyone touches you, but it’s worse when I do it. What the hell, Loki? You’re not as afraid of the Big Green Guy as you are of me. But you still hang out with me. It could give a man a complex.”

            “It has nothing to do with you.”

            Stark breathed in harshly. “You cannot just sit there and say –”

            “It’s not about you, Stark.”

            And really, it wasn’t. Wistful longing uncurled deep in Loki’s thoughts. He considered Stark’s charm. Stark’s compact, battered, but still well-formed body. How the man’s infamous libido and annoying flirtations masked a deeper but rarely-achieved capacity for love. Stark’s addictive mind was all drive, brilliance, and quicksilver clarity. Working with him for two years had been an honor and a joy.

            Almost enough to make up for the illusions the Titan had unleashed upon Loki, in his last days of control. Twisted. Horrible. Beautiful. Plausible, considering what Loki had since learned of Stark’s younger antics. The Titan had died laughing at Loki, at the woven doubt and mockery forever branded within the sorcerer’s brain. Wearing Stark’s face, those illusions came back to Loki in dreams.

            He never spoke of his nights to anyone, but SHIELD’s efficient and kind healers had guessed. Fury himself offered to keep Loki away from Stark. But the daylight Stark was the only possible balm, against the one who woke and worked in the dark.

            “So,” said the engineer, choosing to ignore his previous tack. “The fetters. Is this, ah, really some kink of yours? Not that it’s a bad thing. I’d just like to know in advance.”

            How much to tell him? Loki weighed outcomes with equal despair and pained admiration. Stark would know everything, sooner or later. “Yes. In a way. But it’s more than that. They’ll keep me here, and a little saner. I don’t want magic around me ever again.”

            “They’ll weigh enough for you to feel them. Even if I make the links as small as the material strength will allow.”

            “Comforting,” said Loki. “I’ll always know they’re there.”

            “Those edges might dig into your skin and pinch.”

            “Round the edges. Conform the individual links to lay flat when meshed. If you can fold proteins, you can configure this. As long as there is a clear internal delineation of planes, the properties should hold.”

            “Is this magic? Are we working sorcery, here?”

            “No,” said Loki. “I have none left in me, and I recall sensing that you were one of the most profoundly un-magical beings I’d ever met. That probably shielded you from my staff, as much as the reactor in your chest. We are working a kind of anti-sorcery. With elements that choked the life from at least one star, and now power the dynamo of a living planet. We are using properties of your planet’s core you are not yet aware of.”

            “And you’re teaching them to me? To us?”

            “To you. And you’ll work for it. Please, Stark. I’m tired of all the so-called ‘rescue attempts’ and blatant kidnappings. At least with the chains, you’ll only have to worry about earthbound enemies trying to re-subvert me.”

            Stark was silent for a long time, while the aircraft crossed from cheerful sunlight into a limitless white glow of cloud. Loki could feel the engineer staring sidelong at him, and dared not turn toward him. Even with the window backlighting Loki, he feared the man would see too deep.

            Eventually, Stark sighed and said, “They’ll oxidize like fuck-all. I don’t want you leaving rust stains on my sheets.” Against common sense Loki looked, catching Stark openly flustered by the entendre. The engineer bit his lower lip and rallied back to harmless insouciance. “Or sofa. Or walls. Or bathtubs. Can the chains be coated, and still offer the same anti-magic effect?”

            “By an inert metal, yes.”

            “My gold-titanium alloy. It’s inert. Strong. Pretty.”

            “I do not care what the chains look like,” said Loki, then relented at Stark’s disappointed noise. “You may make them pleasant, if that sweetens your labor.”

            “I’ll make them fucking gorgeous. I can’t _not -_ ”

            “Hubris will be the death of you, Stark.”

            “- Not if they’re going on you. May I sign them?”

            “What?”

            “May I sign your chains?”

            A migraine cadenced to the Titan’s laughter began in back of Loki’s eyes. “Oh, for – yes, Stark! You may scrawl your name on every godsdamned link. Write bad poetry. Write ‘Property of SHIELD’. Or ‘If found, please return to Avengers Tower, New York City’! Write –”

            “‘Property of Tony Stark’,” said the engineer, leaning too close. He’d hitched over into the seat beside Loki. “No?”

            “Ugh, no,” said Loki, turning his face once more toward the white world outside the window.

            “Right, too crass. Something simpler. My monogram on the locks around your ankles, wrists, neck, and waist. Pale gold, casing an iron alloy that nobody else on the planet has ever seen. It could mean something, you know.”

            “Not what you want.” Loki felt Stark’s warm breath on his cheek and neck.

            “Why the hell not? Thor said you didn’t party like his bunch when you were all happy little Asgardian gods, but you were no monk.”

            “That was before the Chitauri,” Loki said, trying not to hunch his shoulders in a reflexive flinch. “Or the Titan. Especially him.”

            “Oh,” said Stark. Then, fiercely, “We sent him to his Lady Death, Loki. He’s gone.”

            Loki looked down at his hands, clasped loosely in his lap. “It does not matter. Not while I live, and can remember.”

            “So. Um. I know there was no permanent physical damage. But you can’t -”

            In that moment, Loki would cheerfully have settled for an aircraft accident. But Stark would not let it rest, would keep pushing and flirting. Stark wanted to know, did he? If the man was going to do this one, desperately important thing for Loki, then maybe he should know everything now. For honesty. So he would not mistakenly look forward to any reward in Loki’s bed.

            “I can want, very much. But past a certain point, panic attacks become flashbacks. Neither pleasure nor pain work as they should, now. The Titan saw to that."

            Stark’s optimism was breathtaking. Or maybe just his ego. “So we take it slow, maybe a little warped, a little sweet. I can do that. I know how you feel about me, Loki. I think you felt it…us… just after Stuttgart. I knew for certain, just before you threw me out the damn window. I wanted you. Still do, just in case you hadn’t noticed.”

            Something in the air pressure and temperature changed, barely an inch away from his cheek. Loki thought, _Stark, do not dare touch me. Not now._

            Stark didn’t. His hand did not go away, either.

            “I felt it,” Loki admitted, hating himself and the entire universe for what he must say next. Stark didn’t need this burden, along with all the others he shouldered. But – for honesty, and for debts paid: “So did the Titan.”

            His daylight Stark was a genius, after all. Stark’s hand dropped; his voice went lower, full of quiet fury. “It’s me, isn’t it? I was the only human who could match you, maybe even _help_ you. The only one you admired. So Thanos used some copy of me to torment you? Just me?”

            Something else had control of Loki’s mouth, obviously. “The Avengers. Some of SHIELD. Thor and his friends, often. Odin. The Frost Giants I killed. But mostly, the Titan and you.”

            “Still?”

            Loki nodded, feeling the tremors begin at the base of his spine. “Every night.”

           “ _For two years?_ And you let me horndog around you? Oh, Loki.” Stark’s voice was ragged now. “Odin knew all this, on Asgard, when he sentenced you to mortality and exile on Earth?”

            Hate bloomed in Loki’s memory, forcing away incipient panic. “Oh yes. I suspect he knew where I was held, and by whom, and to what end, long before the Titan dropped me on Earth to steal the Tesseract. But I was reared to be the All-Father’s pawn in such games of empire. The throw-away prince. Earth, the throw-away planet. Maybe we would prove a bulwark against the Titan, or a delaying tactic. Odin did not expect us to join forces for the second engagement. Or win. That left us threats, in his eyes. I think he hoped you might execute me. Or that I could subvert the Avengers from my place among you. Asgard needs glorious enemies, after all.”

            “Thor is an Avenger.”

            “Thor is allowed to play with his toys.”

            Tony Stark stood up. Even in a tailored suit, weaponless, he loomed. His right hand flexed, as if calibrating a suit repulsor into a bright blue-white lance. “I could burn Asgard for you.”

            Loki realized the Titan had been accurate all along. How little it might have taken to twist this man from paladin to monster. Or still might take. With his genius, Tony could find a way to do nearly anything.

            “No, Stark! Do not play Odin’s games. Asgard will be Thor’s someday, and the better for it. I can say that now. He will be worthy. This planet,” Loki began, then stopped. “Your people have made him so. I have no place in Asgard, no matter what Thor daydreams. I would rather live out my mortal days here. The chains will simply ensure it.”

            Tony looked down at him, mouth crooked in a reluctant smile. “You really want them, Loki?”

            “Yes.”

            “In two years, the only other thing I’ve seen you want so badly is death. If I make these for you, will you promise not to attempt suicide again? Active or passive?”

            “Yes.”

            “Why? What else will they do to you?”

            Honesty. Loki grinned up at his equal, his love, and his doom. And told him.

            At the end of it, Tony only huffed resentfully. “Big fucking deal. Asgard’s loss. I don’t believe in souls, either, so we’re in it together. I’ll start building the chains when we get back,” he said, taking a new seat on the other side of the compartment.

            _Heimdall_ , Loki thought with bitter pride. _Are you watching? Listening? Report this faithfully to your master. Let me be. Let Earth be. Let Thor have his Avengers. Or I will teach Tony Stark how to snuff out Asgard’s magic like a candle, and leave its people worse off than mere humans. I have given him the key. For me, he would do it._

*

            Six weeks later, Odin had done nothing to stop them, and the coremetal fetters were all Tony vowed they would be. "Well?" he asked.

            "They are lovely." Loki's turn to reach out a trembling hand, and not quite touch.

            The iron was clad in esoteric alloys more silvery than Asgard’s golden blaze or Tony’s armor. Each chain was a meshed web of half-twisted knots, nestled together to yield supple flattened bands. Intricate slotted tabs would bite deeply into flat, curved locks. Against the deep green velvet inside the plastic case, the upper surfaces of the locks showed Tony’s drop-forged monogram accented by flaring red gems, one for each lock.

            Tony’s sigil, in all ways that counted.

            Anti-magic.

            Each night for six weeks, Loki had dreamed of that mark cut into his flesh, over and over. Each morning, Tony brought him coffee in private, and asked him to repeat the latest nightmares aloud. Not for pity, or to extend the torment, he’d said. But to know. To fuel the new day’s labor. The phantasms were growing less creative, or more desperate. Loki managed to laugh at them sometimes, in the darkest hours. None of their efforts matched the leashed heat and anger he saw in Tony’s face.

            Away from the Tower, when Iron Man rose to fight, he was doubly fearsome.

            “Rubies?” Loki asked now.

            “Red diamonds. Rarer. The bots and I learned how to cut them ourselves.”

            “Then I am ready,” said Loki, turning his back on the box and Tony’s intimidating array of tools. Shedding the day's clothes along the way, he walked toward the luxurious bed that had been his for most of his time in the Tower. “You have arranged to be undisturbed for the time necessary?”

            “It will be a quiet night.”

            “Do you have the drug?”

            “I had to answer some pointed questions from Bruce, but yes.” Tony placed a crystal tumbler on the bedside table, then stepped back.

            Loki drained it in one gulp. He tasted soft New York water, a nutty sweetness, and something oily and bitter lurking underneath. He settled into the bed. Tony looked down at him with an engineer’s abstract possessiveness, not a thwarted lover’s. He’d not openly flirted since the journey back from Zurich, since asking about the dreams. Part of Loki missed the harmless, frustrating banter, but he understood why Tony avoided it now. It would adulterate the fuel driving them through their days. “Does Banner know?”

            “He knows enough. That this is something you need, for sanity. The agave syrup was his idea, it masks the taste of…”

*

            Sunlight glinted off Loki’s right wrist. He blinked, focusing on the chain wrapping around fine bones and pink skin. Not Aesir flesh, nor the alien blue of a monster born to ice and darkness. A human’s arm, fragile and finite. For the first time in two years, he didn’t feel ill looking at it.

            He felt the other bonds clasping him, their straps a cool weight. He felt no burns from the weld joints. Tony could build mighty Towers and vicious armaments, but he’d been cleverer than a dwarf at this subtle work.

            A soft snore nearby made Loki tense, then turn. The sleeping engineer curled sideways into an easy chair beside the bed. Limp-bodied, his dark hair messy and clothing rumpled, he looked ridiculously appealing. Until Loki saw the tear-tracks leaving pale salt stains down Tony’s cheeks. How long had it been since the man slept well? Were they trading nightmares? Or had Tony not been as sanguine about the chains as he‘d let Loki believe?

            Still, Loki indulged himself for a few minutes, just watching. Wondering how that salt would taste against his lips.

            His stomach cramped. The old tremors shook his spine. The chains could not heal that injury instantly, it seemed. The mere thought of intimacy left him breathless and queasy. But not as bad as it had been, six weeks ago. Someday, he thought. Someday, Tony might flirt again, might touch, and Loki might be able to bear it.

            Best let the man rest for now, the only reward Loki could offer for such a heroic working.

            He dressed quietly, appreciating the well-crafted silence of the chains. They’d be no burden and no danger to his work with the Avengers and SHIELD. When he left his room and strode barefoot down the corridor, he attempted to catalog the differences, sorting real effect from placebo. He felt grounded. Centered. Held fast in something more like a gentle embrace, than the hard reality of planetary gravity.

            No more magic, ever. No more dodging along the byways of the multiverse, the hidden paths meandering far wider than Bifrost, but offering so much more adventure. No more falling into darkness and cold, either. When next he fell, it would be into the arms of Earth.

*

            “Should I check you for damage?” Banner said when Loki sat down at the dining table. They seemed to be alone as yet, the air scented with Banner’s tea and raisin-studded oatmeal.

            “No damage. Stark and I – we’re not like that,” said Loki, looking pointedly at the cast iron teapot.

            Banner looked at the chains clasping Loki’s wrists, then the one around his throat. “What are you two like, if you don’t mind me asking? Because he made some major concessions for those stones, I’ve heard. Three of them went to Pepper. You got six.” A green gleam flickered in his brown eyes for a moment, the Hulk glaring out.

             Loki held up his hands for peace. Both aspects of Banner were very protective of Tony Stark.

             “We are friends. Brothers in science and battle, just as you are. He did this at my request.”

             “Why?” But Banner seemed partially mollified, because he pushed a fresh cup of Oolong in Loki’s direction.

              Loki sipped from the iron cup, and smiled. From Banner’s slight flinch, Loki knew it was not a kind smile. But then, he did not have to pretend with any of these Avengers. Not the good doctor, or the two assassins he guessed were listening in. If he was lucky, not from the implacably honest Captain – or Thor, who must be using supernal control to keep from bursting around that blind spot out in the hall.

              “The chains that Stark wrought of his own generosity shall keep me here, Bruce Banner. When the next extra-planetary ‘rescuer’ tries to steal me. When Amora shows up yammering again. Even when Odin All-Father arrives in a storm of apologetic beneficence, to grant me pardon and return the ‘gift’ of my magic and immortality.”

              Ah, there, that faint gasp had to be Thor’s.

              “For how long?” Banner asked.

              “For my natural span as a human, or until something kills me. I told Stark – I am done with trying to kill myself. I will make this short life have meaning. But I should warn you all: do not linger around my body, when I die. I stole from Earth, and she will have payment.”

              “What kind?” But Banner knew, from the way his gaze flicked downward, then up to Loki. Stark told him, or let slip something. Banner was as much a genius as Stark, in his own way.

              “It may be dramatic. Fire, molten metal, localized destruction. At the end of it, what still passes for my soul will be bound to the Earth’s core, as yet another of her defenders. I will have no name, no thought, no memory. No ghost or spectre. I will never again be raised or resurrected, compelled or constrained. Thus do I carry out the sentence laid upon me from the moment of my birth.”

              “Tony knows?” Banner was too calm, too peaceful. No hint of green showed in his eyes now.

               Loki was grateful again for the chains holding his heart together.

               “Stark knows. And he still did what I asked. That is what we are,” said Loki.

    

           

**Author's Note:**

> I've played fast and loose with the canons, sorry, but isn't that what fanfic is for? Originally, this was up to my normal levels of darkness, but I wanted to give them some hope at love and what passes for normality.
> 
> Artwork for this piece can be seen here, on my Blue Night blog: http://www.cranehanabooks.com/blog/2013/05/22/i-should-not-be-doing-art/
> 
> Yes, there will be a sequel, dammit. Eventually. Violence, explicit content, and character deaths later in the series. Just so you know.


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